Courses

*PLEASE NOTE that there are FOUR STUDIO SECTIONS.*
This course will explore how we observe and interpret our visual world. We will examine material from a wide range of sources, focusing on the social, political, and cultural connections, as well as the conceptual base and formal properties that comprise a particular visual/sensory experience. Two ongoing concerns will be the exploration of how art and life intersect, and how our perceptions of what constitute the “high” and “low” in collective culture establish our beliefs about art. The course requires the completion of three projects that stress the visual, intellectual and intuitive aspects of art making.

Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. A study of drawing as a tool for articulating what the eyes, hand, and mind discover and investigate when coordinated. Some sessions will be devoted to drawing the human figure.

Art 13 is an entry-level painting course designed to familiarize students with the materials, technical approaches, and processes of painting. Through a series of exercises, assignments, and visual presentations, we will investigate color interaction, contextual relationships, conceptual and compositional strategies, and the relationship between (subject, content, meaning) and process. Twentieth century painting history and theory will be referenced throughout our time together.

Consistent attendance is an important factor for this class to be a success. There will be a roster sheet for you to sign each day when you arrive. More than two absences will affect your final grade by one half. Two more absences will drop you another half.

*PLEASE NOTE there are TWO SECTIONS given: 14/1 AND 14/2 and that Art 14/2 is Ceramics*

This course will use ceramics as a way to explore and understand three-dimensional space. The student will develop a practical understanding of how clay and glaze behave, while building a conceptual framework through which to apply this knowledge. Studio practice includes hand building, modeling, carving and glazing as possibilities for turning ideas into three-dimensional propositions. Illustrated talks will help acquaint the student with the ideas artists have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices.

This course is the study of the interaction between physical form and space. We will focus on building a strong conceptual foundation while developing the practical studio skills needed to translate your ideas into three dimensions. Shop practices will include hand, machine, and computer-aided fabrications. Field trips and illustrated talks will help acquaint students with the ideas sculptors have explored through history and in contemporary sculptural practices.

This class will investigate the potential of ceramics as sculpture. Both traditional and experimental approaches to ceramics will be explored as a way to develop our technical skills and expand our conceptual approaches. Field trips and illustrated talks will examine the ideas that have engaged ceramic sculptors in many traditions and the processes that they have used to expand them. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. This course examines and explores various print disciplines in a 15-week survey format. Students study and create traditional forms of fine art printmaking including woodcut, lithography, intaglio, and screenprinting as well as newer approaches which includes transfer and digital printmaking. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications. This course is a prerequisite for upper division print courses.

This course examines and explores various print disciplines. Students study and create traditional forms of fine art printmaking including woodcut, lithography, intaglio, and screenprinting as well as newer approaches which include transfer and digital printmaking. This course is a prerequisite for upper division print courses. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

Description: This online course establishes internet citizenship as the process of forming online communities through participation. The course itself seeks to establish a community of learners, innovators, and explorers who engage with 23 principles of internet culture through missions. The missions include topics aggregation, networking, identity, amplification, and subversion. Students work in small groups with about five members and complete learning missions through research and creative assignments using photography, writing, video, and user interaction design.

This new course will enable students to think critically about, and engage in practical experiments in, the complex interactions between new media and perceptions and performances of embodiment, agency, citizenship, collective action, individual identity, time and spatiality. We will pay particular attention to the categories of personhood that make up the UC Berkeley American Cultures rubric (race and ethnicity), as well as to gender, nation, and disability. The argument threading through the course will be the ways in which new media both reinforce pre-existing social hierarchies, and yet offer possibilities for the transcendence of those very categories. The new media — and we will leave the precise definition of the new media as something to be argued about over the course of the semester — can be yet another means for dividing and disenfranchising, and can be the conduit of violence and transnational dominance.

This course provides students with the technological and conceptual groundwork for advanced courses in video art and filmmaking including the use of digital cameras, sound recording, basic lighting techniques, digital editing, compression, and online dissemination. We will focus on what makes compelling moving images that elicit powerful intellectual and emotional responses. The course also explores the range of techniques and languages of creative video making from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms.
The course consists of weekly lectures, screenings, discussions and a lab section. The lab is a production workshop in which students will produce a series of short exercises and a final project.

This course provides students with the technological and conceptual groundwork for advanced courses in video art and film making including the use of digital cameras, sound recording, basic lighting techniques, digital editing, compression, and online dissemination. As we work to understand what makes compelling moving images that elicit powerful intellectual and emotional responses, the teaching goals include mastering the basic elements of video making: duration, composition, light, color, relationships between sound and image, as well as creative approaches to editing such as dramatic continuity and montage. The course also explores the range of techniques and languages of creative video making from traditional story genres to more contemporary experimental forms, and is based on online tools for production, dissemination, and commentary. The course consists of a weekly lecture including screenings, discussion, and meetings with visual artists, and a lab section. The lab is a production workshop in which students receive hands-on instruction and produce a series of short exercises and a final project.

In this hands-on, project-based class, students will experience group creativity and team-based design by using techniques from across the disciplines of business, theatre, design, and art practice. They will leverage problem framing and solving techniques derived from critical thinking, systems thinking, and creative problem solving (popularly known today as design thinking). The course is grounded in a brief weekly lecture that sets out the theoretical, historical, and cultural contexts for particular innovation practices, but the majority of the class involves hands-on studio-based learning guided by an interdisciplinary team of teachers leading small group collaborative projects.

Often artists respond to limitations, whether self-imposed or life-imposed by lack of time, space or budget. But limitations are not always restrictions. Finding creative responses to limitations or boundaries can lead to unsuspected solutions. Many painters use specific limitations that propel their work into unexpected territories through their process, their materials or by finding ways of working that manifest as a result of an environmental or other constraint.

During this course, students will achieve the maximum impact within limited means. Through in-class and more in-depth projects, limitation exercises, and technical painting workshops, students will explore strategies that involve process, collaboration and project-based painting using limitation as a source of propulsion in their work. Emphasis will be placed on focusing one’s practice, as well as honing the skills needed to realize projects.

Students will study artists who utilize specialized processes, boundaries and strategies to guide and develop their work. The class will be supplemented by field trips and readings.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours open studio per week. Inquiry into concepts of order, process, and content as related to human experience. While faculty contact with students is highly individualized, the course involves group critiques and lectures as well as assigned field trips. Prerequisites 10, 12, and 14 or equivalents.

This is an advanced studio and lecture class for art majors, to advance their practice through practical research into the varied processes and methods of contemporary painting. Students will expand their skills and develop a dedicated practice through self generated projects and critical engagement. In-class critiques and open discussion will reinforce and challenge the students as a vital part of their technical, conceptual, and professional development.

The primary focus of this course is to advance fundamental technical skills in the process of figure drawing, to gain understanding of human anatomy, and to acquire a personal visual language of drawing from life. Through close observation of the human form the student will develop ways of seeing that go beyond regular visual perception. The student will also expand the skills necessary for figure drawing executed in variety of dry and wet media, together with diverse methodologies of traditional and contemporary figure drawing.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Advanced drawing and composition, color and black-and-white, primarily on paper. Art 117 or 118 is required of all art majors.

This course is designed to explore a range of contemporary art movements around the globe, through a closer look at their central ideas, artists, and artworks, as well as the preconditions and broader social context in which the work is being produced. Topics covered will range from the emergence of localized avant-garde movements in Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America to the implicit globalism of the international biennial circuit.

Six hours of lecture and three hours of studio per week. The process of Intaglio will be explored in a variety of image producing techniques. Hand drawn, photographic, and digitally manipulated images are combined to produce multiple works of limited edition fine art prints. Image content and development is examined through drawings, studies, slide lectures, group critiques, and direct assistance. Each student is required to attend all class periods and participate in group discussions and critique. It is the responsibility of the student to maintain a portfolio of all works executed during the semester and to turn in all assignments on time. The grade is determined by attendance, completion of projects and participation in critiques. Personal improvement will also be taken into account.

Prerequisites: Open to upper division art majors or by consent of instructor.
Credit option: Course may be repeated for credit.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. An opportunity to discover what an artist can do with an etching press and a familiarity with such processes as etching, drypoint, aquatint, color, and monotype printing. The difference in the ways that these mediums enhance and condition your ideas will be made clear through individual and group critiques.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. In the course of making screenprints, you will be encouraged to find an esthetic direction of your own. Your instructor will also help you develop skill in using both stone and metal plates.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. The projects will introduce you to a variety of ways in which you can use metal to make spatial structures that will speak to your esthetic imagination. Illustrated talks will acquaint you with the artists whose ideas and processes have changed the nature of metal sculpture in the 20th century.

An opportunity to learn the many ways of shaping and giving form to wet clay, then making it permanent by firing it. Illustrated talks will examine the ideas that have engaged ceramic sculptors in many traditions and the processes that they have used to expand them. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Students who are experienced in clay may enroll in this course to continue developing their ideas and their technical command of ceramic materials and processes.

This class will investigate the possibilities and potentials of sculptural material, both physically and conceptually. We will focus on a deeper exploration of the current state of art practice while questioning what methods and materials are considered non-traditional. We will discuss multiple applications as a means of mediating ideas in space, including sculpture, installation, video, photography and public exchanges. This class will have more advanced instruction in fabrications, including the wood and metal shops. Lectures and demonstrations introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Installation and site-specific work, indoor and outdoor. Each student will select a site on campus and make a piece for that site. The choice of materials will depend on the exigencies of the site and of the student’s interest.

In this class the student will consider sculptural issues of (and beyond) the object itself, notions of “site specific,” and of whether an object is distinct from its environment or is part of it. We will also question issues of space, placement, installation, context, and public interaction. Students will engage with a variety of sites, both on and off campus, with drawings and written proposals being an integral part of all projects. Lectures and demonstrations will introduce students to techniques and varied applications.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Projects are aimed at understanding and inventing ways in which time and change can become key elements in an artwork. Regular screenings of professional tapes will illustrate uses of the mediums and provide a historical context.

This is an advanced studio drawing course that compares and contrasts traditional Asian and European pigments, surfaces, and images with contemporary strategies, sources, and methods. Students will use various traditional hand-made pigments, binders, papers, and drawing materials to explore cultural developments and representations of space, time, and objects. A major course outcome is to create hybrid, diverse content that combines contemporary images and narratives with traditional historic sources. The course provides lectures, demonstrations and studio research methodologies.

Topics of concern to the instructor, usually related to current research, which may fall outside of the normal curriculum or be of more restricted content than regular studio courses. An opportunity to investigate topics and mediums on an ad hoc basis when there is a compelling reason to do so, providing there is no other course that deals with these concerns. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Art Practice but open to others. For special topics and enrollment see listings outside of 345 Kroeber.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Topics of concern to the instructor, usually related to current research, which may fall outside of the normal curriculum or be of more restricted content than regular studio courses. An opportunity to investigate topics and mediums on an ad hoc basis when there is a compelling reason to do so, providing there is no other course that deals with these concerns. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Art Practice but open to others. For special topics and enrollment see listings on the bulletin board outside of 345 Kroeber.

This class will survey new media from a lens of personal transformation and artistic activism as means to create positive social change. Students will learn about different new media genres, such as experimental video, documentary, performance, sound and video installations, and they will create work based on these categories.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Topics of concern to the instructor, usually related to current research, which may fall outside of the normal curriculum or be of more restricted content than regular studio courses. An opportunity to investigate topics and mediums on an ad hoc basis when there is a compelling reason to do so, providing there is no other course that deals with these concerns.

This is an advanced interdisciplinary class with a focus on material culture, studio production, reading, and critical theory on capitalism’s effects on the production of art, as well as artists’ responses to its demands.

What does it mean to make “objects” in a world already glutted with object-products? How does the mechanical or mass production of object-products inform or create friction against the intimately handmade? This class will ask students to examine their own methods and materials of “object-making”, situate themselves against a contemporary context of global manufacturing and “product-making,” and attempt to reclaim the idea of sculpture as a social catalyst as opposed to standard consumer object.

Topics covered will include the readymade and globalization, the unique object versus the mass-produced, artists who mimic corporate production and distribution chains, and the social and political effects of production, consumption, capitalism, and the various forms of resistance to it such as shopdropping, counterfeiting, public ownership, and the DIY craft movement. Art movements such as the Bauhaus and the Arts and Crafts Movement will be explored as examples of responses to the dilemma of mass production. We will also cover the intersection of art and design, looking at groups such as Atelier Van Lieshout, Unfold, Futurefarmers, and Andrea Zittel, among others.

Students will utilize traditional sculptural mediums, ceramics, and craft techniques as well as simple 3-D computer modeling programs, free object databases, and digital processes, among others. Project assignments are structured to take advantage of individual students’ interests, while at the same time providing distinct parameters and goals. We will also be looking extensively at contemporary artists working today, and discussing how their art reflects upon and impacts the world around them. A museum field trip, collaborative project, visiting artist talks, and and workshops/demos will be included. Regular readings will be assigned, with discussion and response to follow.

Six hours of lecture and two hours of discussion per week. Social Practice broadly refers to work produced through various forms of direct engagement with a site, social system or collaborator. Interdisciplinary in nature, such work often takes the form of guerilla interventions, performance, institutional critique, community based public art and political activity, all sharing the premise that art created in the public sphere can help alter public perception and work toward social transformation.

Four hours of lecture per week. Prerequisites: Completion of all lower division requirements for the major. Meditation is arguably the most ancient, powerful, and yet simple spiritual practice in the world. It is known in various forms in nearly all times and cultures, and plays a part in every religious tradition. We will examine how meditation can affect your art both in terms of practice and content. The class will be structured with slide presentations, museum visits, discussion of reading, and reviews of art work. Art from various contemplative traditions will be examined.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. Topics of concern to the instructor, usually related to current research, which may fall outside of the normal curriculum or be of more restricted content than regular studio courses. An opportunity to investigate topics and mediums on an ad hoc basis when there is a compelling reason to do so, providing there is no other course that deals with these concerns. Primarily intended for advanced undergraduates and graduates in Art Practice but open to others. For special topics and enrollment see listings on the bulletin board outside of 345 Kroeber.

Nine hours of studio per week. Course may be repeated with consent of instructor. This course will cover a range of digital media and practices, with a view towards exploring current and future possibilities for photography. Inclusive of multiple approaches to scale, execution, and technique, the course enables students to examine and push the limits of photographic practices. This course will help students advance their digital shooting and Photoshop skills from a beginning to a more advanced level, and will cover the workflow of digital photography: camera usage, scanning, image editing, management, and printing.

Three hours of lecture and six hours of studio per week. This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production, and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production. Each week will include relevant readings, class discussions, guest speakers, demonstration of examples, and studio time for training and working on student assignments

There are reportedly 100 hours of video uploaded to YouTube every minute, added to a flood of footage already in torrent. Add to that all the other video sites online, the duration of every new TV show and the thousands of movies released every year, plus more than a century’s worth of the older stuff, and we are lost in an ocean of moving images. It’s a wonder we haven’t drowned.

Maybe the question should: what does it mean to continue video?

Six hours of instructional studio and three hours of open studio per week. This hands-on studio course is designed to introduce students to the foundation-level skills and concepts used in digital video production. In the course of mastering the basics of optics, sound recording, and editing, students will find creative video responses to formal assignments that explore such questions of scale, duration, narrative, and the use of video as a component in a larger work. In an effort to find alternatives to conventional models and expand our experience of the medium, the student will experiment with unorthodox image capturing devices like GoPros and digital scanners, and with unusual approaches to screening, such as installations and non-standard monitors.

Six hours of lecture and three hours of studio per week. Course may be repeated for credit.
This is a studio class designed to introduce artists to the medium of sound. Students will learn the basic skills necessary to work with audio, including microphones, digital recording, editing and processing, speaker and installation design, and circuit-bending. In addition, students will learn about the history of sound art and the ways in which visual art and experimental sound practice inform and expand upon each other.

Nine hours of studio per week. This advanced studio course is designed for students who have mastered basic skills and concepts involved in digital video production and are interested in further investigating critical, theoretical, and creative research topics in digital video production. Also listed as Film and Media C187.

Prerequisites: Film 100, 185 with a grade of A- or better and consent of instructor.

Two hours of lecture and four hours of studio per week. This course offers an introduction to game design and game studies. Game studies has five core elements: the study of games as transmitters of culture, the study of play and interactivity, the study of games as symbolic systems; the study of games as artifacts; and methods for creating games. We will study these core elements through play, play tests, play analysis, and comparative studies. Our reading list includes classic game studies theory and texts which support game design methods. After weekly writing and design exercises, our coursework will culminate in the design and evaluation of an original code-based game with a tangible interface.

Course Format: Two hours of lecture and seven hours of studio per week.Description: This class provides a basic foundation for digital photography with hands-on instruction in the use of digital cameras and online image dissemination. Topics include image capture, composition, image syntax, image analysis, image manipulation, metatext production, and image sequencing for visual narratives. We also study image dissemination through online networks including social networks, blogs, news, storage, search, and print services. Rather than limiting the discussion of photography to the production of the photographic image itself, we explore in written assignments how the reception of images can change based on context, usage, and network dynamics. While we rely on required DSLR digital cameras to produce images for weekly photographic assignments, we also experiment with alternate digital image generation techniques from telescopes to microscopes. All coursework will be posted and discussed online as well as in weekly lectures, workshops, and critiques. Course readings cover the history of photography, the theory of photographic reproduction and the theory of networked and memetic dissemination

This immersive studio/seminar class focuses on contemporary models of art making, exposing students to current issues in the art world, and fostering interdisciplinary models of thinking and making. Through field trips to museums, galleries, and alternative art spaces, as well as studio visits with local contemporary artists, students will be able to situate their own projects within the larger sphere of contemporary art. Language and writing skills around artist statements, critical readings, and the critique process will be emphasized to understand how research methods give meaning in a studio practice. Presentation of a final studio project asks students to examine their place within a contemporary art dialogue.

*Please note that there are TWO sections of this class, K185/001 AND K185/002

Three hours of lecture and three hours of studio critique per week. This course provides students with a foundation for understanding their work within a cross-disciplinary critical context. Through class and individual critique, readings, guest artists, and field trips, students will explore the practical and conceptual components of their own media and practice within a broader discussion of artistic production. In addition to this focused attention on the critique process, the class with address the ongoing needs of supporting one’s work within a community of artists, arts professionals, and arts organizations. Each student will work towards developing the most effective tools for communicating their work to these broader audiences using strategies that are appropriate/effective for their ideas, media, and audience.

Course may be repeated for credit. Three hours of seminar per week. Studio work emphasizing various aspects of form. Group criticism. Intended especially for M.F.A. candidates. ALL GRADUATE COURSES MUST BE TAKEN FOR A LETTER GRADE.

Course may be repeated for credit. Six hours of instructional studio and three hours open studio per week. Weekly meetings will provide a forum for the discussion of issues related to assigned readings in the fields of esthetics, theory and art criticism. ALL GRADUATE COURSES MUST BE TAKEN FOR A LETTER GRADE.

The 301 Pedagogy Seminar is a preparation for GSI’s and is aligned directly with the teaching of Art 8: Introduction to Visual Thinking. Within our pre-semester pedagogy meetings, each graduate student develops a syllabus with emphasis on teaching philosophy, course content, approach to grading, attendance policy, and critique approach and style. Graduate students develop lesson plans and relational formal exercises for each of the course’s three main projects. Instructors receive the Art 8 Pedagogy manual, which contains twenty years of GSI’s syllabi and other helpful information. During our weekly semester pedagogy meetings, the graduate students and I discuss the pertinent issues of their current classroom dynamics.